


Tightrope

by doctortrekkie



Series: Break Me Down and Build Me Up [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: A scene that didn’t make the cut for WIT, ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN, Angst, Chrom!Inigo, F/M, I wrote like half of this today, Impulsive last minute birthday fic, Mentioned Canonical Character Death, Mentions of the bad timeline, New readers:, because I made the impulsive decision to do it like three days ago, because I'm Smart, but it gave me too many feels to leave unreleased, c’mon you should know me better by now, dancer magic headcanons finally explored, did you really think Inigo would get something happy for his birthday, it makes sense in this universe I promise, not a crack pairing!, precious dancer child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-07-31 10:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctortrekkie/pseuds/doctortrekkie
Summary: The first night in Ylisstol after the Valm War.Or: The first time Say’ri saw Inigo dance when it wasn’t with her.(Takes place during WIT Part 7; April 1015)





	Tightrope

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate alternate description: Why Inigo can't reclass to a dancer in Awakening.
> 
> In all seriousness, I had planned for this scene to take place in Whatever It Takes (sometime when they were still in Chon'sin, actually) but I couldn't quite make it fit without everything over there dragging more than it already is, and I was/still am worried about getting burnt out before I make it to Grima (and yet I still ended up writing this before making it to Grima, ha.) Anyways, about three days ago I decided to reswizzle it into a birthday fic because I still felt guilty that Owain didn't get one, which may not have been my wisest decision considering Leo's birthday fic took me like a month... but, hey, somehow I managed it.
> 
> Also: this technically takes place in between the two scenes of my next, as-of-yet unpublished chapter of WIT (Part 7, Chapter 13) and as such is ever-so-slightly ahead of the current timeline. I take care not to mention any plot points from that chapter that haven't been revealed yet, so do not fear spoilers.
> 
> Similarly of note: a firm timeline with Actual Dates OMG has been gradually working its way into the series over the past few months. A brief description has been placed in the series notes for Break Me Down and Build Me Up for any clarification.

_ People look like the specks of dust when you’re this high off the ground, I’ll do my best not to let you down so feet don’t fail me now… _

**Ylisstol Palace, Ylisstol, Ylisse—April 3, 1015**

Ylisstol was different from what she’d imagined.

Say’ri had understood Inigo’s reticence to speak of his homeland and she hadn’t pushed; she knew, after all, that his clearest memories were not of the bright and clean castle they occupied now, but of a city afire, filled with the screams of dying and undead alike. It was no surprise he didn’t wish to dwell on it.

Now, though, walking the halls her husband had grown up in—years ago yet still in the future—seemed to have slotted into place some piece of him she hadn’t realized she was missing, as if some hidden aspect of his psyche had abruptly revealed itself to her. Even long after the sun had set, by the time the castle had quieted and they had retired for the night, she still hadn’t quite known what to do with it.

So, to put it simply, she’d gone to bed. The subconscious could sometimes work wonders on puzzles the waking mind couldn’t seem to figure out.

Say’ri wasn’t quite sure what woke her, some hours later—just that she’d shot up with a gasp, hands clamoring for sword or knife with some instinct that had awoken during the war and hadn’t quite left her yet.

The darkened room lit up with a flash a moment later just barely visible through the cracks in the curtain pulled closed around the ornate four-poster bed. The light was followed by a thundering crash and the dull, unceasing drum of rain.

_ Just a storm, _she thought, some odd piece of her wanting to laugh as she sank back against the silken sheets.

It was then that her sleep-addled brain recognized she was alone.

Though it wasn’t exactly uncommon, Say’ri still let out a quiet sigh of regret. While it had been slightly more regular by necessity during the Valm War, Inigo’s sleeping schedule could only be described as _ odd _ at the best of times. She’d known him to function perfectly well for weeks, if not months on end with only four or five broken hours every night, waking at the slightest sound—then had watched him, twice now since the end of the war, become utterly unrousable for sixteen hours at a stretch. The first time he’d told her rather sheepishly—after falling asleep twenty minutes after dinner and not budging an inch until lunchtime the next day—that sometimes he just _ did that _and he never had been able to figure out why.

Unsurprisingly, tonight did not seem to be one of those nights, however much she would have liked to curl up beside Inigo and let the sound of the storm lull her back to sleep. She tried to close her eyes again, only to find them springing open once more with awareness at every attempt.

It was at that moment that she caught another sound over the storm—soft and light, with some hint of a pattern she couldn’t quite pick out even though her brain insisted it was there, yet not quite regular enough to be simple footsteps. Say’ri sat up again, slower this time, one hand grasping at the sheets for want of a hilt, the second night back in Dai’chi still terribly imprinted on her mind.

With deliberate care, breathing so shallowly she might as well have been holding her breath, she shifted the curtain at the end of the bed just enough to peer through the crack.

On the wall across from the bed was a white stone fireplace that took up nearly the entire wall, flanked on either side by tall, dark bookcases. A seating area stood loosely arranged around the fireplace, and inside that circle, with his back to her, was Inigo.

She had danced _ with _ Inigo before—the night of Owain and Robin’s wedding stood out starkly in her mind and the thought of it had never failed to make her heart flutter. _ Milady, you wound me, _ he’d teased at the time. _ You should know by now my mother is a dancer, and unlike my father, she has managed to teach me a thing or two. _

Say’ri hadn’t realized until that moment just how much he’d downplayed _ a thing or two, _ because until that moment she had never truly seen Inigo _ dance. _

Say’ri had caught glimpses of the liquid grace she saw in him now—it bled over into his swordplay, after all, conspicuously enough that she had noted it the very first time they had met. She hadn’t known what it was from, at first; in the early days Inigo had managed to talk quite a bit without ever saying anything of import, and it had taken her quite a while to learn of the passion he kept so carefully hidden.

And hidden it was—even now, breathless and mesmerized watching him, some part of Say’ri realized she ought close the curtain and return to at least feigning slumber before he noticed her, that this piece of him was one he didn’t wish her to intrude upon.

She hesitated a moment too long, though, and the decision abruptly ceased to be hers.

It was plain the moment Inigo saw her, the fluidity of what had been about two-thirds of a pirouette suddenly fading into a jerked landing. A gasp tore from his lips, his eyes visibly wide even in the dark.

An apology rose and died in her throat, her lips refusing to form it.

“How long have you been watching?” Inigo finally asked, still partway up on his toes, his arms held slightly away from him, looking as if he might take flight in an instant.

“Only a moment,” Say’ri managed. “The storm woke me, and then I heard you.”

“I see,” Inigo said. He seemed to settle a bit, posture-wise, coming a little bit more back down to earth. “I would’ve gone outside, but…” He gestured to the window; exactly on cue, there was a flash and a crack, briefly illuminating his shadowed features. His lower lip was pulled in between his teeth and though it was next to impossible to tell in the dark Say’ri had a feeling his entire face had turned to a fabulous shade of red.

“Are you all right?” she finally ventured, though the words nearly stuck in her throat again.

“Oh, yes,” Inigo replied. “I’m mostly just panicking on the inside rather than the outside right now, so that’s a fun change.”

Say’ri winced. “I really did not wish to disturb you.”

“I—” He broke off, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m sure.”

She cleared her throat, settling back a little bit. “I am rather surprised you haven’t started screaming.”

“I’m trying really hard not to, merely so that I don’t have to explain this entire thing to the twenty people who will inevitably come barging in.”

“Likely in various states of undress,” Say’ri added.

Inigo winced. “Exactly.” He started toward the bed, then, disappearing briefly behind the curtain before pushing it aside and settling cross-legged in his customary spot on the bed.

“I’ll not watch if you wish to continue,” Say’ri said.

“No,” he whispered. “I was about finished, anyway.”

A long moment passed in which he pointedly avoided her gaze before she sighed, reached over, and clasped his hand in hers. “I understand your bashfulness regarding a performance in front of others,” she said. “But I do hope you realize just how beautiful you are.”

Inigo let out a light snort at that. “There’s no need to flatter, love.”

“I do no such thing.”

“But I’m _ not,” _he insisted, still not looking at her. “It isn’t… I’m not…” He trailed off, then added in an undertone, “Good enough.”

The last vestiges of sleep dropping away, Say’ri turned to face him further. “By whose standards?”

_ “Mine.” _

The word came out so sharply that Say’ri found she didn’t have an answer to it.

“Or…” He swallowed. “Or the world’s, or… I don’t know.” With a shaky breath, he continued, “You may think me terribly morbid, but… when my mother passed away, I used to dance at her grave. I’d try to imagine what she’d tell me… I could hear it all in my head when I danced. But it wasn’t really her, and it wasn’t enough… hadn’t _ been _enough.”

Inigo shuddered when he finished; Say’ri reached over, running her hair through locks of blue-black hair still tousled from sleep. “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain more than that, my love.”

He paused, then nodded. “Okay. Okay. I…” He nodded again as if to steel himself. “You know what my mother does on the battlefield. It’s its own form of magic, really. Nothing like you could find in any sort of spellbook, but that strength she can bring… It’s not exactly physical, either.”

Say’ri hummed in agreement. Though Ylisse’s queen might carry a sword for protection on the battlefield, it was far from her primary weapon.

“Well,” Inigo continued, “Even before Grima actually rose, before my father died… Things were getting pretty bad. Even us kids were starting to realize it. And I didn’t want to fight—not like Lucina and Owain did, at least—so my mother started to teach me just what it was _ she _did.”

“I see.”

“It went well, to begin with. I was learning it pretty well, I thought. And then… Grima came, and my father died, and Mother… never quite got over it. She tried, did her best to stay strong for everyone, and I remember Aunt Lissa and Uncle Lon’qu and Lucina helping with what they could, and then… She was busy, so our lessons stopped, and I didn’t _ really _mind because I could understand by that point at least some of what was at stake. But that’s when she got sick.”

Inigo broke off, having to draw in a few unsteady breaths before he continued.

“It was bad. There were months when she hardly made it out of bed… I can remember her _ barely _getting down the stairs when Luce turned thirteen. We never knew if it was something magical, if Plegia hexed her or something similar, or if it was just… grief. When she finally started getting better, I was exactly as ecstatic as a nine-year-old boy who loved his mother should’ve been.”

“Aye,” Say’ri said.

“We went for a walk,” Inigo said, his voice growing more hollow by the word. “Just in the palace gardens. She told me the fresh air would do her good… There was a Risen. Just one. We never figured out how it got in. The palace guard was there, and they took care of it in an instant once they got there.” He shook his head. “She was my mother. She protected me and it got in… it got in one _ damned _hit.”

Tears spilled freely over his cheeks now.

“It _ shouldn’t _have killed her. If it happened now she’d be laughing it off while she talked to the healer. But by that point, she was so weak…”

“Oh, Inigo…”

“I stayed with her all that night. I think some part of me believed that as long as she made it to the morning she’d be all right. If I could just give her the strength to do that… Not enough to beat Grima, not enough to bolster an army, just enough for her to live through the night… So I danced for her. Everything she’d ever taught me, everything we’d ever practiced together, I poured into it. I _ tried, _Say’ri. I tried with everything I had. And it wasn’t enough.”

A long moment passed. “Inigo,” she finally whispered. “You cannot spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for that.”

“You’re about eleven years too late for that, love,” he replied. “Well, I still kept up dancing as a hobby, but after that point, I figured… if I couldn’t even manage to save my mother, and without any more of her instruction… clearly I would do the army no good as a dancer, so I took to the sword. To make a long story very short.”

“Have you not thought of trying again?” she murmured. “With Lady Olivia very much alive again?”

Inigo shook his head. “Not only have we not exactly had the time… It’s a kind of mindset, almost. A way of thinking. I don’t think I’ve got it anymore.” He snorted. “Something else Grima took from me.”

“You’d know not until you tried again, though, aye?”

Once more he shook his head. “Grima first,” he murmured. “If it could offer some unprecedented advantage to take it up again now, then maybe. But at my age, it might take years to even get back to where I was.”

“Aye, that’s right. Inigo the Elder, at the ancient age of twenty, which is actually a fair few months less than you consider yourself to be since you lost nigh half a year when you came back in time.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And if I’m an elder, what’s that make you?”

“Fie, no need to start that.”

_ “You _started it.” There was an edge of a smile on his lips now, though, the heavy atmosphere dissipating ever so slightly. Still, he glanced away after a moment. “I know that you… want children. Need them, even, to continue your line. But until Grima’s gone… I can’t bear to. Not when there’s still a chance it could all happen again.”

“Aye,” she whispered. “I know.” After a moment, she asked, “Did you ever tell anyone else? Of what you tried?”

“You would be the second.”

“Owain?”

“Mmhmm.”

Say’ri paused. “You know,” she whispered, “that I love you?” He sent her a puzzled look. “All of you. Even the pieces you don’t wish to share, or those you are not ready for me to see just yet. I love you.”

Inigo paused, his lower lip trembling almost imperceptibly, then jolted forward in an embrace that left his head buried in the crook of her neck.

“I love you too,” he murmured.

Neither of them moved for a long while after that.


End file.
